


West of the Moon

by Lexicona



Series: Roads [1]
Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Last Ship (poem), The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Bisexual Female Character, F/F, F/M, Female Bilbo Baggins/Thorin Oakenshield, Female Frodo, Female Frodo Baggins/Female Samwise Gamgee, Female Merry Brandybuck, Lesbian Character, Reincarnation, Stillbirth, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Threats of Violence, Tomboy, Tomboy Merry Brandybuck
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-15
Updated: 2014-06-16
Packaged: 2018-02-04 15:03:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1783285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lexicona/pseuds/Lexicona
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You're a good lass, Flora. I'm very selfish, you know. Yes, I am. Very selfish. I don't know why I took you in after your mother and father died but it wasn't out of charity. I think it was because... of all my numerous relations, you were the one Baggins that showed real spirit."</p><p>On the eve of Miss Bilbo Baggins' eleventy-first birthday, a certain dark-haired, blue-eyed hobbit is hinted at a hitherto unknown tragedy that occurred during Bilbo's return to the Shire that involved a certain King Under the Mountain and may have played a part in Bilbo's adoption of an orphaned Flora Baggins over thirty years later. Unfortunately, Bilbo makes her speech and disappears before Flora can inquire any further, and a few months later Flora leaves the Shire for Bree, along with her two vegetable-stealing cousins, tomboy Merriadac "Merry" Brandybuck and Peregrin "Pippin" Took, and her loyal friend Rose Gamgee. </p><p>Lately, however; she's begun wondering if "Friend" is too weak a word to describe the affection she feels towards her quiet, unassuming gardener.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Home is Behind

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time attempting to write a female-female romance, and the first I believe where frodo and sam are both girls, here named Flora Baggins and Rose Gamgee. comments, critiques, advice, kudos and downloads are encouraged and appreciated.

She lost him.

It was a year after the quest, and Bilbo Baggins had lost the only thing that Thorin Oakenshield, King under the Mountain, had given her besides his True Name, the Mithril Shirt and her Wedding-Bead:

Their child.

He'd been stillborn, died in the womb, the midwife had said, as well as something along the lines of "Dwarves and hobbits just don't mix". If Bilbo had been feeling any emotion other than grief, she would have viciously responded that they did indeed mix, _**They**_ **had**   _ **mixed,**  _in sweat and seed and love beyond the Misty Mountains in the house of a Skin-changer. 

Instead, she silently weeped and continued to do so until long after her son was buried under the ground.

Thirty years later, their child returned to her.

********

It was late at night after the celebration of the birth of the newest Baggins had ended. Drogo Baggins and Primula Brandybuck had been blessed with a baby girl, who they'd named Flora both in reference to the flower-names of Hobbit lasses and in honor of Dora, Drogo's sister. Bilbo had offered to stay and help with the baby and give Primula a chance to rest; it was the least she could do after Primula had comforted her when she'd lost her son.

Though she had been at the party, she had mostly been by herself with only a pint of Green Dragon brew for company, otherwise she'd been talking with Hamfast about the bulbs that needed planting or about his new daughter Rose. In either case, she hadn't had the chance to see the baby, not that she was complaining. Although happy for her cousins' joy, there was a part of her that had never really healed after her son's loss.

She recalled reading a book in Rivendell on her return home to the Shire, in the company of a very Pregnant Tauriel— _Did_ **her** _baby live?_ she wondered— about the history of the world. In that book, it had said that Illuvatar, the One, had an unknown fate planned for men, of which hobbits may have descended from. She was also aware, from conversations with Gandalf and Elrond as well as the snippets of conversation amongst the dwarves, that Durin The Deathless was called such because he seemed to be re-incarnated at unpredictable, intervals.

As she held the babe that was hers and yet was not, Bilbo thought of a warm and sturdy Dwarven King, now cold and dead under the Mountain, and how she would never see him hold this child, _their child_ , and smile with joy and pride as he'd done when they'd made love at Beorn's house—a literal roll in the hay—and cried both with the injustice of it as well as the joy that she would be able to live and watch this bundle grow up. In that instant, she secretly blessed the young fauntling with Thorin's secret name— _never mind the gender-specifics,_ she thought— and began to sing. 

Its melody was old, older than the Shire, from before two fallohide Brothers had crossed over the Brandywine river with their people in tow and settled the current Homelands of the Shire folk.

Perhaps it was as old as the riddles that she'd told to the two glowing eyes of the slimy creature in the utter dark of the Goblin-tunnles, from whom she'd stolen a magic ring.

The words, however, were her own, singing a song that she would often sing to little Flora in the future, a song that Peregrin Took would eventually sing a misremembered segment of to Denethor the Steward:

_Upon the hearth the fire is red,_

_Beneath the roof there is a bed;_

_But not yet weary are our feet,_

_Still round the corner we may meet_

_A sudden tree or standing stone_

_That none have seen but we alone._

_Tree and flower and leaf and grass,_

_Let them pass! Let them pass!_

_Hill and water under sky,_

_Pass them by! Pass them by!_

_Still round the corner there may wait_

_A new road or a secret gate,_

_And though we pass them by today,_

_Tomorrow we may come this way_

_And take the hidden paths that run_

_Towards the Moon or to the Sun._

_Apple, thorn, and nut and sloe,_

_Let them go! Let them go!_

_Sand and stone and pool and dell,_

_Fare you well! Fare you well!_

_**Home is behind, the world ahead,** _

_**And there are many paths to tread** _

_**Through shadows to the edge of night,** _

_**Until the stars are all alight**._

_Then world behind and home ahead,_

_We'll wander back to home and bed._

**_Mist and twilight, cloud and shade,_ **

**_Away shall fade! Away shall fade!_ **

_Fire and lamp, and meat and bread,_

_And then to bed! And then to bed!_

 

Flora fell asleep long before the song was finished


	2. The World Ahead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Rose, we're still in the Shire. What could POSSIBLY happen?"  
> When Merry and Pippin are involved, ANYTHING can.
> 
> Aka the chapter when we get a first meeting of genderbent Merry, pippin is the same, and Antics ensue.

"Come on, Rose; ask Sammie for a Dance" Flora said, drenched in sweat and face flushed from dancing, her dark curls plastered to her face. 

"Think I'll just have another Ale."

*****

_A few months later..._

Rose Gamgee had gotten lost.

Shortly before they'd set out for Bree in the wee hours of the morning,  Gandalf had pulled Rose aside while Flora had checked the contents of their packs one last time. Gandalf had requested something of Rose, and she'd sworn on the life of her old Gaffer that she would follow through to the end.

Unfortunately, it now seemed as though she would be unable to do so.

Stumbling out into a stretch of unplanted field, she glanced around, but was unable to see the person she'd sworn to protect.

"Miss Flora?" she called out, now quite worried. Racing along the unplanted stretch, her eyes darted around frantically, searching.

"Flora? FLORA!" she called out, practically frightened at this point that something had happened; that she'd tripped over something and broken her leg, or worse....

...Until she appeared from around a bend in the path.

'' 'Thought I'd lost you" Rose muttered.

"What are you talking about?" Flora inquired, her brown skirt dusty with dirt and pale face covered.

"S'just somethin' Gandalf said t'me." Rose began walking towards her mistress at a slowed pace, her walking stick making a slight _thump_ where she stuck it in the dusty ground.

"What did he say?" Flora asked with the tone of someone explaining something important to a small child, yet at the same time not condescending.

"Don't you loose 'er, Rose Gamgee," Rose said, recalling the promise she'd made to Gandalf that moments before she'd thought she'd broken, " An' I don't mean to." she added, now feet from her mistress.

 "Rose, we're still in the Shire," Flora responded in a cheery and concillary tone before adding  "what could _possibly_  happen?"

No sooner had she said those words than both Flora and Rose heard two cries of _"oof!"_ and suddenly found themselves rammed into by _someone_ and lying on the ground, surrounded by vegetables.

Flora looked up at the person who'd rammed into her (and was now on top of her) and wished she hadn't spoken so soon.

"Flora!" Pippin exclaimed cheerily, turning in Sam's direction. "Look, Merry, it's Flora Baggins!"

"Hullo, Flora!" Merriadac "Merry" Brandybuck said with a wry, mischievous grin and and an equally mischievous wraggle of eyebrows. A bit older than Flora, Merry was known throughout the Shire as something of a menace with her shenanigans, such as the incident with the Dragon firework a few months prior at Bilbo's Party. Usually Merry was accompanied by another, such as Fatty Bolger or (especially as of late) Peregrin "Pippin" Took, her younger cousin through her mother, Esmerelda Took. 

Now, it appeared as though Pippin had been dragged into _another_ one of Merry's antics.

"Get off 'her! Rose shouted, pushing Pippin aside when he wouldn't budge and hoisting Flora to her feet, helping her dust off her clothes while Merry and Pippin gathered the fallen vegetables from the ground.

"Here, hold this." Merry remarked as she shoved some of the vegetables into Rose's arms, as if somehow that remark explained everything.

"What's the meaning of this?" Flora demanded, momentarily confused and concerned before it dawned on her where they were.

"You've been into Farmer Maggot's crop!" Rose exclaimed, voicing Flora's prior realization. As a faulting living at Brandy Hall, Flora used to steal mushrooms and occasionally carrots from the farmer until one day his dogs chased her up a tree and she never went back. Since her parents had drowned in the boating incident and she'd gone to live at Bag End, her visits to Buckland (and by extension Farmer Maggot's Bamfurlong farm) had become rarer as she grew older.

Flora remembered that she'd sometimes brought Merry along with her, and was currently regretting doing so. 

At that moment, all four heads turned in the direction Merry and Pippin had emerged from. Distant barking could be heard, as well as cries of "HEY YOU! STAY OUTTA MY FIELD!" that seemed to be emanating from a mean-looking scythe several yards away. Merry and Pippin shoved Flora into the corn behind them and ran, with Rose following moments after.

***

Flora landed on her back under the warm, sturdy body of Rose. Though she'd often daydreamed about how it would feel to be under Rose, she knew full and well that Rose would most likely never see her mistress as anything more than a friend.

This train of thought crossed her mind once again when minutes later, she felt Rose's calloused and tan hand gripping her own fine porcelain one. Glancing down, she realized she had very nearly put on the Ring and made her companions sitting ducks to the thing shrouded in black standing above them. Merry's quick thinking saved them as well, for it seemed the creature above them was not above falling for the old "I'll-toss-something-in-the-opposite-direction-so-it'll-be-distracted-long-enough-for-us-to-get away" stunt that Merry had pulled with the bag of mushrooms they'd just picked.

As all four hobbits fled from the creature, Merry's demand of "What WAS That!?" convinced Flora that an explanation was in order.

Now, it seemed as though three was company. 

**Author's Note:**

> So, yeah.... that was the first chapter.  
> I was originally going to make Bilbo's loss of child miscarriage, but since I have no idea how to go about writing such a touchy subject I decided to make it a Stillbirth. Part one is Bilbo's story, the next chapter concerns Flora and Rose at Farmer Maggot's fields, the third at Rivendell, the fourth at the Cracks of Doom, the fifth at the grey havens, and the sixth as a surprise.


End file.
